technonaturalist

I still haven’t worked out whether it’s better to keep a regular update even if it’s “I’m an idiot and got stuck again” or just not say anything if I’m that stuck.

So after combing the hair into the right shape, I found out a few things.

• while the collision detection works really nicely in particle edit mode, it completely fails when actual physics is applied, because for whatever reason the emitter collision is completely ignored
• I can’t work out for the life of me how the hell to rig particle hair

I’ve done spline IK for the tail rig so was trying to do something similar with the hair but don’t understand how particle weights work. Wasn’t the biggest leap to find out about curve guides, and then took me the better part of forever to work out that curve guides had to be on the same layer as the particle emitter to work. Once that was sorted out, I then spent way too long playing around with the different curve types to work out which one would be the best for the job. Seems that nurbs animates quickest so that’s what I’m using.

March kicked off with Perth’s first steemup. The kids got to have some interesting conversations with new friends and encouraged to continue blogging (except for 9yo who disappeared off to the pool for most of the thing).

The steem colours I sported in my mohawk so everyone knew where to go are still in!

The month kicked off with 9yo deciding to make his own “card game” after ages of playing Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh. After quick playtests with me and 11yo, 11yo decided to help make even more “cards”. I use the term loosely bcause the “cards” were all A4-sized.

The game was fairly simple and entertaining, and after playing a couple of times 9yo decided that he probably needed more “good” cards as it didn’t take very long for me to die despite the lives and death prevention things that had been added in the iteration with 11yo.

Last week was working on pants and boots (and getting to use some fabric normals and a leather material some kind souls made available on Blendswap):

trying to wrangle the hair into several hair ties (it was supposed to be tied with a cord but I finally got it through my thick skull that it wouldn’t stay, even when I did have long hair I didn’t do anything interesting with it, so I’m going to claim total stupidity ignorance and too much anime on my part there!):

Currently all about hair and pants.

I did the pants first to procrastinate the hair.

They do actually have a pattern but I turned down the lights so the skin wouldn’t be so overblown, so it’s something that will be noticed in bright light. Otherwise they look like…black pants. I was thinking of using velcro for the trail strap but may end up just making it an elastic loop as maybe in the future there will be little nano thingies in the clothes that automatically repair fraying clothing so the elastic doesn’t give out.

Lame excuse: I haven’t done a progblog forever because I got well and truly stuck redoing the prehensile tail rig, but I think I’ve fixed it now, and made it work (to some value of work) with the pitchipoy rig (the spline and its controllers are actually on their own rig, but the spline controllers are copying the location of some controllers that are on the pitchipoy rig with additional thingies to keep them from moving too far from each other, feels a bit convoluted but it works).

Two weeks after getting home we were back in Jurien Bay again, this time for the kids’ great nanna’s 90th birthday party. As usual we were only there overnight and stayed in a different beach cottage with a backyard nicely set up for kids.

The kids spent the day we got there playing in the backyard for a little while before having showers and getting ready for the party that evening. 8yo taught their 6yo cousin how to play *Exploding Kittens * which the 6yo took a few games to learn and apparently told his mother he didn’t understand but he seemed to enjoy it as he kept wanting to play.

Early in December we realised we hadn’t been swimming for a while. After a hefty argument (JJ prefers swimming in fresh water, the bigs and I strongly prefer the beach and 8yo doesn’t care as long as it’s swimmable) we hit up Serpentine Falls with a friend and their kids.

The first thing we noticed was that the blackberry bushes had been cleared out and when we got there the top carpark closer to the falls was closed, though there were some cars in there (either ignoring the fact the gate was supposed to be shut or perhaps they were in there before it had been shut).

Farewell 2017, happy 2018!

I did my usual and had a drink while 3d-ing. I probably should have taken a photo of the drink for the benefit of the steem crowd but didn’t. JJ piked out but the kids stayed up with me (probably for the novelty of staying up til midnight as 8yo’s bedtime is 8, and the big two at 9:30). Despite procrastinating for pretty much the entire day I managed to finally close the retopo and have started painting.

I was supposed to do this before Silly Season kicked all the way in and…well I’m in some downtime before it arcs up fully so here we go XD

Retopo is going slowly and painfully as per usual. I just have to finish the wings and then I can start painting, and hope that my retopo job isn’t completely crap and that he animates all right. Then after that I have to fix the rig and give him some hair and then maybe have a little fun while I work out who I’m doing next.